The Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless communication standard potentially offers a high-capacity, high-speed wireless interface for use by mobile phones, data terminals, machine-type-communication (MTC) or machine-to-machine (M2M) equipment, and the like. However, in some instances it may be desirable to sacrifice aspects of an LTE terminal's performance (such as its data capacity) in order to gain other benefits, such as a reduced complexity and/or cost. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project has considered such possibilities, for example in connection with “low-cost” or “limited capability” User Equipment (UE).
A feature of LTE is that it supports scalable carrier bandwidths from 1.4 MHz up to 20 MHz, in 1.4 MHz increments. This feature can be leveraged to provide for low-cost UEs by providing UEs which are only capable of operating over a relatively small portion of the total available 20 MHz maximum band. This allows the UE design to be simplified significantly and the associated cost can also be reduced. However, this approach is problematic in some respects.
For example the 3GPP discussion document “Analysis and discussion on bandwidth reduction,” R1-132879, 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 Meeting #74, August 2013, considers a previously proposed scenario in which low-cost MTC UEs are provided with a reduced downlink channel bandwidth of 1.4 MHz for data channel in the baseband, with control channels (such as the Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH)) which are still allowed to use the carrier bandwidth. In this scenario, the UE would be limited to a maximum data processing bandwidth of only 6 physical resource blocks (PRBs). As a result, common messages such as System Information Block (SIB), Random Access Response (RAR) and paging transmissions would generally be required to be transmitted via these 6 PRBs if they are expected to be received by such low-cost UEs. The implementation of this is a non-trivial problem.
Therefore there is a need for methods and systems for supporting limited capability UEs that is not subject to one or more limitations of the prior art.
This background information is provided for the purpose of making known information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.